Corinna Shattuck

Corinna Shattuck (April 21, 1848 – May 22, 1910) was an American educator and missionary in Turkey, recognized for heroism at Urfa in 1895–1896.[1]

Corinna Shattuck, from a 1910 publication.
Corinna Shattuck meeting with leaders at Urfa, from a 1900 publication.

Early life

Corinna Shattuck was born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1848. After her parents died, she was raised by her grandparents in South Acton, Massachusetts. She trained as a teacher in Massachusetts, at the Framingham State Normal School.[2][3]

Career

In 1873, Shattuck was sent by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions to Turkey, where she remained for most of the next 37 years. She set up kindergartens, girls' schools, orphanages, a school for blind students, and vocational training programs at Urfa,[4][5] and coordinated relief efforts in that city.[3] She worked with Fannie Perkins Shepard to establish a business called Industries for Women and Girls that helped provide work to thousands of women and girls.[6] She described her work with Armenian refugees at Urfa in a letter published in The Washington Post in 1896: "We are now dispensing coffee, 800 pounds having been given to us by the Red Cross people. We are also giving out shoes for the widows and orphans, arranging for their rents, and setting up the different tradesmen in work," she wrote.[7] She arranged for braille editions of Armenian texts, including the Bible, to be produced, and sponsored a young blind Armenian woman, Mara Haratounian, to attend college in England.[8][9]

In January 1896, she helped to prevent a massacre of Armenian women and children in her care at Urfa,[10] by standing in front of her church and school (some versions of the story have her holding an American flag in one hand) and challenging the Turkish forces to attack her personally.[2] Six Turkish officials protected Shattuck from the "angry mob".[11] The incident was fictionalized in an 1899 novel, By Far Euphrates by Deborah Alcock.[12]

Personal life
The Armenian inscription on Corinna Shattuck's tombstone in Newton, Massachusetts.

Shattuck returned to the United States in ill health in 1910,[13] and died soon after from tuberculosis, at Massachusetts General Hospital, aged 62 years.[14] A bronze plaque in her memory was dedicated in 1915 at Framingham State Normal School.[2] Her tombstone in Newton, Massachusetts is inscribed in English and Armenian.[15]

References
  1. "She Stood Off Turkish Mob" The Atlanta Constitution (May 24, 1910): a9.
  2. "Tablet to Missionary" Boston Daily Globe (February 15, 1915): 13.
  3. "'Buried' in Oorfa" Boston Daily Globe (May 31, 1908): SM4.
  4. Corinne Shattuck, "Missionary Industrial Training" Missionary Review of the World (September 1903): 686–687.
  5. "What W. B. M. I. is Doing in the Land of the Crescent" Mission Studies: Woman's Work in Foreign Lands (October 1905): 299.
  6. "Isabel Kaprielian-Churchill". auroraprize.com. Retrieved 2021-11-23.
  7. "Relief Work in Armenia" The Washington Post (June 25, 1896): 3.
  8. "Corinna Shattuck" Outlook for the Blind (Autumn 1910): 104–106.
  9. John E. Merrill, "Miss Corinna Shattuck" Missionary Herald (July 1910): 312–313.
  10. "Schoolmam Saves Lives" Oakland Tribune (June 9, 1910): 12. via Newspapers.comopen access
  11. "These Turks are Heroes" New York Times (February 24, 1896): 1.
  12. "Our Book Table" Life and Light for Woman (April 1899): 177.
  13. "Worn by Work of 37 Years" Boston Daily Globe (May 10, 1910): 3.
  14. "Mission Heroine Dead" The Washington Post (May 24, 1910): 4. via Newspapers.comopen access
  15. "Testimony Cut in Stone" The Missionary Herald (January 1911): 5.
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